BS: Books successfully taught

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: EBarnacle
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 09:25 PM

I just introduced a couple of kids to Patricia Wrede [good subversive that I yam].

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: BTNG
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 05:27 PM

My introduction to John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos was the 1960 film version Village Of The Damned. Personally I still find the film quite creepy, (being in black and white helps with the creepiness) even after reading the book many times

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 04:57 PM

Digression, but the BBC adaptation of "The Secret Garden" was my introduction to this book. It was quite good, an American remake was terrible.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 04:15 PM

I am American as my parents. My Mamma instructed me to check out (from the library) The Secret Garden when I was 9 or 10, it being her favorite book when she was young.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 02:09 PM

I remember very little of the material taught by teachers, having a large home library and a public library a few blocks away. I read a great deal, but mostly on my own.
I do remember a ninth grade English Lit. exercise by a teacher who led us through conversion of "A Tale of Two Cities" into a script for a play. It took up a large part of the year.

From Junior and Senior high school, I remember multiple works by
Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T. E. Lawrence, the sorcery and science fiction stories that I could find, Dracula and Frankenstein of course, and a good deal of southwest archeology and history.

Being raised in the U. S., I was an adult before I saw "The Railway Children" and "The Secret Garden", but I did read much of H. G. Wells ("Mr. Britling Sees It Through" impressed me, although I seldom see it mentioned anywhere).

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: katlaughing
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 10:56 AM

I don't remember very many books from school, but one teacher, Mr, Grassfield, who always challenged us and taught us, in 7th grade, from the same book being used in college, really hooked me on The Bad Seed as published in a special young adults version of the Atlantic Monthly which we each subscribed to that year.

Everything else I was reading at home, constantly, anything to hand, of interest, from before kindergarten. I was an "early" reader. We had good literature at home, but Kipling, Twain, Scott, and a few other were esp. favs. I was drawn, time and again, to M.R. James ghost stories, James Whitcomb Riley's stories, and A. Conan Doyle, as well as Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird.

From my brother's books, I read a lot of Faulkner and, my oldest sister had a book of short stories by Kafka, for a college course, which I sneaked out of her room and read. There was also a lot of poetry read and recited. My Latin and English teacher of three years, Mrs. Worcester, was a dragon to be feared, BUT an excellent teacher who made sure we read a lot of old Latin authors.

In younger years, I have very fond memories of Mrs. Harris(?) who read us Little House on the Prairie, then related her own experiences growing up in Baton Rouge.

And, like Sins, I devoured Nancy Drew mysteries and the stories of Poe.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: Lighter
Date: 23 Oct 11 - 09:02 AM

I taught at a different level, in what was only superficially the same culture.

Part of the difficulty in a discussion like this is that there were only a limited number of books I could choose from. (Mostly we did shorter works.) Most everything in introductory literature courses was prescribed, with some options of course. Later, and briefly, I could shoose what I wanted.

The most "successful" books were probably (in no particular order)

Gulliver's Travels
Macbeth
The Tempest
Catch-22
Bonfire of the Vanities
The Naked and the Dead
The Song of Roland

Heart of Darkness (prescribed for freshman lit) was beyond almost everyone. They were universally put off by the style, the pace, the ambiguity, and the question of why they should be made to read such a "racist" book.

(That was an issue that had surfaced in the media of the period, and it was almost impossible to persuade students that the book was, if anything, anti-racist. Huckleberry Finn, which I never taught, had already come under fire for the same imaginary reason.)

One poem that impressed a number of students was "Spring and Fall: To a Young Child." Once they understood it, they were appropriately staggered.

As I say, choices were limited by time, curriculum, and opportunity. There's no telling what might have been the reception of Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamazov, War and Peace, King Lear, Hamlet, etc., etc.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 11:27 AM

I had Greek plays like Antigone in 6th grade (age 11) Shakespeare, tragedies, comedies and even histories, Cevantes' Don Quixote, Faulkner, Capote, Hemmingway, Twain, Austen, Bronte, etc. (ages 12 to 17). I loved it all. Oddly, when I was in Junior High, we had a reading class separate from English and separate from history, if you didn't take a foreign language. So it was like a double dose of literature and sometimes history, even some philosophy, sociology and geography, depending on the content in reading class.

Anyway, successfully taught is relative to the individuals doing the teaching and being taught. My favourite English prof. (Dr. Frank Lovelock) got me hooked in the first lesson. He didn't come into the classroom, until we were all in, seated large eyed, wondering why the teacher was a bit late. He didn't take roll. He didn't introduce himself or ask about us, or pass out the syllabus. He put his books down on the lectern. Went over to the door, shut it. Put his back to it, facing us, he turned off the light. Then started hammering on the door. "It's out there," he whispered. "But we are safe because we are in here." "We are safe in the mead hall because we have the fire and each other." more hammering. "But it is out there and it wants in." Light came back on, he walked back to lectern, opened the literature book and started reading the description of Grendl's mother from Beoweulf.

Even though we could only cover bits of literature in class and on exams and papers, he made you want to go out and read the entire novel, play, letter, essay, poem, etc.

Best damn teacher I ever had.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 10:18 AM

I was always skipping behind in English class, reading the literature stuff at the front of the book instead of enjoyed diagramming sentences and adjectival clauses as I should have been. From about age 8 onward I read anything I found mildly interesting, from cereal boxes to "Brave New World." When I didn't understand something I'd figure it out for myself. I probably knew what a Fallopian tube was before half of my classmates knew they had one.

Books I devoured at the rate of one every four or so hours if they were at my reading level or better, slightly beyond.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 10:16 AM

How does one tell, Will? Well, when they come into the classroom saying, "Please, Sir, can we do "Hobson's Choice" today?" it is a fair indicator. I am not saying that happened all that often; but you can generally tell when the book we are reading together is grabbing them. (Funny how I fall into the historic present here: it is all more than 25 years ago!)

A shame you had Cole's-Notes-bound teachers, Sins. I tended to go to the other extreme and go into background to the extent of having some pupils ask anxiously "Why are we talking about this? Will it help in the exams?" But I generally managed to cover the syllabus. I believe I am right that the National Curriculum would probably now preclude my wandering off to talk about the Pre-Raphaelites for a double period because of a stage direction in Pygmalion about William Morris wallpaper or such; but I never learned to regret such digressions.

~M~

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: Micca
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 10:15 AM

For God's sake , Montressor!!!

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: SINSULL
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 09:31 AM

I don't remember any. Teachers took a Cliff Notes approach to books which reduced them to how to answer questions so you pass the test.
Years later, I read and re-read many of them for the shear pleasure of reading. Moby Dick has become a favorite. All of Jane Austen whom I despised as a teenager.
My teachers were more successful with short stories. To Build A Fire comes to mind and The Cask Of Amantillado. O. Henry went over well. One was able to make poetry come to life.

The funny part is that I read and enjoyed reading from childhood on but not with the help of my teachers. Brave New World along with Nancy Drew, anything I could get my hands on. Bullfinch's Mythology was worn to bits. Poe and Lovecraft - I still love hauntings and horror.

Sorry for the ramble - a bit off topic.

Subject: RE: BS: Books successfully taught
From: Will Fly
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 08:41 AM

How you took me back with this thread - to years at school! I never taught schoolchildren - just specialist lectures to university students now and then - so I can't comment from a teaching point of view.

One question springs to mind, though - how you assessed the impact in terms of popularity and success with the pupils: feedback from the kids themselves, exam successes, etc?

I ask because, quite often, the seeds planted at school only start to sprout in later years. We lean things at school that we only appreciate in later life. I "suffered" with French from 11 to 18 ('Gentlemen - learn the dictionary' was the weekly advice from my 6th form French master) - but am so thankful now that I did, as I can go to France and chat away at a reasonable level.

As for English, a book that stick in the memory - even though I haven't read it since school days - is "Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man". Why that should have remained behind is anyone's guess!

Subject: BS: Books successfully taught
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 22 Oct 11 - 02:11 AM

I taught English at secondary level [11-18] for 30 years, from 1st year right up to A-level; but have been retired now for ¼-century. For some reason a train of thought led me this morning to trying to remember which books I taught over those years, worthwhile in literary terms*, were most popular and successful with the appropriate age-groups*.

*shall not endeavour here to analyse these categories ~ you all know what I mean

Ones which sprang most instantly to mind were Harold Brighouse's Hobson's Choice; John Wyndham's The Midwich Cuckoos; E Nesbit's The Railway Children; F Hodgson-Burnett's The Secret Garden; Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest; Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, Julius Caesar, Macbeth.

Any others found these particular works rewarding to teach? What has been the experience of other teachers, or others, in this connection?

~Michael~